Intuition in Futures Work

We come to the week in Alternative Perspectives class where we see how far one’s embrace of alternative extends. We call it visionary futures (aka visioning, visualization, imaginal visioning, creative imagery, intuition, etc.). We rely heavily on the work of our own Professor Emeritus Dr. Oliver Markley. He used to teach an entire 15-week course on visionary futures. He also does public workshops and has published extensively on the topic. His view of the core ideas:

Rational/analytic methods for futures work need to be complemented by “imaginal” visioning methods that are based on higher intuition

“Prophetic” foresight, involving a moral or wisdom component, is essential given the existential challenges ahead

In other words, in a practical sense, this approach is a useful complement to the prevalent empirical rational, measurement approaches dominant in organizations. And we need different approaches to solving the big problems/challenges of the future.

I think it is fair to say that it’s not for everybody, but this work is finally being recognized by professional futurists as valuable. But it is gaining some recognition. Oliver organized a series of articles for a special “Symposium” issue of the Journal of Futures Studies on intuition in futures work that won an APF Most Significant Futures Works Award this summer — in the “Advance the methodology and practice of foresight and futures studies” category.

It’s been helpful for me to distinguish between different types of intuition:

Holistic hunch or “gut” feeling (memory influenced)

Transcendental insight or vision (memory independent)

We’re aiming for the transcendental insight or vision, which admittedly is more challenging to access than our gut feeling. Developing or ability to access our transcendental vision is not easy. But it fits with the notion of foresight needing to up its game (if you will) on the left-hand side of Wilber’s Integral Matrix. Many years ago I wrote about how my scanning was imbalanced toward the right-hand side…relying on right-hand sources. It was really quite disturbing to me – when have those moments of cognitive dissonance. Something’s wrong here – that launched me into Integral Futures. And it opened me up to exploring new ways to access the left-hand side, thus my curiosity about intuition and visionary futures was now activated. I guess the point of my little story here is that one can come to this work when it makes sense. I had an opportunity to take the Visionary Futures course from Dr. Markley when I was a student in the program in 1988-1990. At that time, I was not ready, quite frankly. I’m kicking myself now, but to be honest I probably would not have gotten much out of it, because I was not open to it.

These days I have integrated some of these tools into my practice. I would say that I mostly use these tools only with clients with whom I’ve built a close relationship. Perhaps they’ve been of greater use to me in how I do my own work, that is more of how I build my own capabilities, than in directly working with clients. Andy Hines

Dr. Andy Hines is Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Thus, he has honed a skill set designed to make foresight more actionable in organizations.

In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007); 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997); and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994) and has another in the hands of publishers: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education. He has also authored dozens of articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards’ Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for “An Audit for Organizational Futurists” and the 2008 award for “Scenarios: The State of the Art.” He has appeared on several radio and television programs, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

A great post recognising Oliver’s work and some of my interest areas. I’m into Intuitive Foresight & Wisdom research.

Oliver also has a good paper and read on ‘Olaf Stapledon: Personal Reflections on Cosmic Inspiration from a Pioneering Visionary’.

For Intuitive Foresight there are several texts that I find are a must have they are listed so that your students and other practitioners and researchers can also pursue this course of thought if they so choose:

This field of study is not one that you can come to with a short course as it requires an openness of mind, deep and broad philosophical understanding and a good degree of practice experience. Life experience. The interesting thing is that there are considerable overlaps with new scientific & neurological findings, with ordinary and non ordinary states of consciousness and with the likes of paranormal capabilities such as clairvoyance, clariaudience, remote viewing, insight and character reading, telepathy and such mind extending domains. Again an open mind is critical without it a practitioner should perhaps focus on more normative traditional areas and methods.

I hope the above references assist your students into the future.
Kind regards,

When you hosted The Learning Forum’s Foresight Council many years ago, we had Dr. Markley share his work. I found to make total sense. In addition to running The Learning Forum, I co-founded a company that uses neurofeedback for training on self-awareness, imagery, unconscious bias and related capabilities.

Perhaps the next step for futurists or anyone who has to make decisions about the future is this kind of training that helps you link your brain with your heart and your gut. Mind, body, intuition.

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